The Budget Office of the Federation has started taking steps to improve accountability in the administration of public funds by digitally addressing bottlenecks in the budgetary processes.
The Office recently disclosed that the National Assembly would receive the 2024 budget next month.The agency also stated that the National Assembly would receive the 2024 budget by October 2023.
This information was made public yesterday at the start of training sessions for ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) on how to prepare the 2024 budget using the GIFMIS/BPS (Government Integrated Financial Management Information System Budget Preparation Sub-System).
The GIFMIS budget preparation subsystem, according to Dr. Ben Akabueze, Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, aims to facilitate the country’s budgetary processes in MDAs while reducing bottlenecks and boosting efficiency, transparency, and accountability.
“We hope to submit the 2024 budget before the end of October 2023, and we are working to make sure it happens, even though it is a new administration. We are working to meet the deadline for the budget submission so that the National Assembly can do their own and the budget is passed within the year for the implementation to start by January 2024,” he stated.
As the budget office works to align the sectoral policies with the comprehensive National Development Plan 2021–2025 and the specific programs of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government, he claimed that cooperation and synergy between the various MDAs are crucial.
The important training, according to Akabueze, who was represented by the Director of Revenue and Fiscal Policy, Hapsatu Mormoni, is intended to improve MDAs’ overall competence to use the budget preparation sub-system of the GIFMIS in the budget preparation process.
The basis for achieving inclusive socioeconomic growth, infrastructure development, and general societal well-being, he claimed, is set forth in the President’s plan.
Akabueze urged MDAs to carefully read the Budget Call Circular in order to prevent mistakes that would typically be prevented if they had followed the pertinent sections of the circular.
In order to do this, he stated that this year’s module would focus on important clauses and parts to take note of in the Federal Government Budget Call Circular for 2024.
“Let us harness the power of information technology to build a more transparent, accountable, and effective government machinery,” he said.
Speaking at the same time, Adelola Agbana Titus, the Director of Procurement and Zone Coordinator for the Training, stated that the goal of the training is to identify and address any bottlenecks in the MDAs’ budget planning and public procurement processes.
“Before now things are done in shabby ways that are not supposed to be done with the MDAs, we have to come back as a budget office to address and correct them. With this digital tool, things should move according to how we plan it so that by December the budget will be presented to the NASS, so we can start the budget by January with bottlenecks and hitches,” he concluded.
